HOW TO KEEP YOUR HEAD DURING A CRISIS: A HIGH STAKES SCI FI OFFICE POLITICS QUEST

vi Markoviz takes your refusal with uncharacteristic concern. "You serious?" he asks you. "Usually, when I offer to put someone in the clink, it comes with high amounts of financial recompense to me, instead of a refusal." He leans back and thinks for a while. "Does he have anything on you?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Huh. He's usually pretty quick about that, if I recall correctly." The plant chews the leafy organs that could possibly be construed as a mouth. "Workplace romance?"

"So uh, I know I can't find an HR department to take this complaint, I still find that very intrusive and not at all conducive to a proper working environment."

"That's true," he concedes. "Take an apology. Aaaanyway, if you need him around, you'll get him around. Why for I'll never know, but whatever insane scheme you're cooking up, possibly centered around rapid vertically descending transfers on certain people, you better remember that I actually do want the conspiracy's ringleaders dragged to light, or more preferably, an iso cube."

He stands up, dusting his officer jacket, offering you a crooked grin. You are left with severe unseasonal chills and a sinking feeling in your gut.

He knows. Of course he knows. Why wouldn't he pull up your profile, ask it a few questions, run a few scenarios? He forgot more about you than you know- well, that's a bit too much. He has people for that, after all. The point is EMPIRE scans are complete and comprehensive. To maintain your security access, you've had to open your backups to investigators. That's enough data to build an alpha fork, which is illegal but who's going to prosecute the Triumvirate?

Of course, a niggling part of you points out, the fact that there's a conspiracy going on right here, the absolute center of their power, well to their omniscience.

Great. Where does that leave you?

In the hot seat, of course. Stuck in the middle of some multi headed military monster and some fanged maw of conspiracy. Whop dee do, Cylange.

So that's Tzsin sorted, but you still need to bring him his actionable intel, the military jackbooted jerk. What's wrong with the world of a trusted coworker? That's fascism, expecting you to come out with hard facts first. And the damndest thing is, you've got no clue where to start. Those geniuses in Counter Terrorism just busted the only point of contact you've had with them.

In fact, the very next day, you showed up to the Rose. There is warning tape all over the door and the windows are busted. The fullborg in front gave you the classic 'keep moving asshole' look. You kept moving, lacking any military hardware to contest this request.

When you rolled into your office, Tzsin very specifically doesn't look at you. Your inbox is empty, of course. You feel the eyes on you, or is it just your paranoia? Is the intern (on some sort of civic scholarship) one of Them? How about the dudes in the software tank? Them?

That way lies insanity. But is it wrong? It was a coworker who directed you to the Rose. The Triumvirate knew about the Rose. How many people in the same office as you are conspirators? How many informers? And would they know that you're a true believer, a double agent, or just compromised?

Gosh, but you hate this. You'd take a nine hour meeting over this any time.

Maybe you do need to expose yourself. Go crazy a little bit. See if someone picks you up, you were thinking on the way back home, you can just plead to them that you were doing an extremely outre form of finding a reason to take a day off due to illness. The reason? Severe democratic tendencies.

Genius Plan
[]- THE SOLICITER: Just pick someone likely and do what they did to you: hook them into a conspiracy. If nothing happens, try again, until you hit someone who's in the know, which you'd be able to tell if they grab your arm and hiss 'are you mad, man? Don't you know about opsec?'
[]- THE MADMAN: You're at your wits end, so here's something: get your ass thrown in jail again. Now, you'll go through proper channels to file a double agent request, but: if you start a fight with a military guy, in a public enough setting, about the guys in the same cell as you, you might get picked up.
[]- THE PROTESTOR: The Triumvirate believe in free-with-limits speech. That's why there's always protest parades going down somewhere. It's good for the spirit, does absolutely jack all to the state, and with things being the way they are, everyone needs a party. So just join one! There's bound to be enough civic minded terrorists down there that you can hook back in.

A/N: Sorry for the short chapter.